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TESTIMONY OF
LIEUTENANT GENERAL RICHARD E. BROWN III
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PERSONNEL
U.S. AIR FORCE
 

BEFORE THE
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TOTAL FORCE

REGARDING
ADEQUACY OF THE TOTAL FORCE

 March 10, 2004

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, and especially in the past three years, America's Airmen have responded to dramatic changes in our force structure and the world security environment.  Since 1991, we have reduced our active duty force by nearly 40% -- from 608,000 to 375,000 -- while remaining engaged around the world at levels higher than at any time during the Cold War.  To prevail in a dangerous and ever-changing world, we have completely transformed our Air Force, from a heavy, forward-based presence designed to contain the Soviet Union and allied communist governments into an agile expeditionary force, capable of rapidly responding on a global scale, with tailored forces ready to deal with any contingency.  Since the attacks of 11 September 2001, that transformation has taken on an even more urgent and accelerated pace to respond to the world situation as well as our domestic security environment.  This transformation has produced outstanding initial results.  But the journey is just beginning.

We recognize the Herculean effort put forth by all members of the force to defend America and her interests abroad.  We recognize in particular the stress we have placed on members of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve.  We are making every effort to relieve the stress on the Airmen who make up those mission-essential forces, just as we are making every effort to relieve the stress on many of our Active Duty members critical warfighting skills while we work to get down to our end strength objectives.  As we respond to the many challenges we face, it is important that we take time to recognize and support the tremendous sacrifices made by Air Force family members, whose contributions to the overall Air Force team are as crucial as those of any other team members; sometimes even more so.

None of this would be possible without the exceptional support Air Force personnel receive from the Congress.  Over the last several years, you have approved significant advances in pay, benefits, and retention incentives for the men and women who serve in all of the military services.  These initiatives have made a significant difference for the readiness of your Air Force and the quality of life of our members and their families.  They improved retention and increased enlistments, essential to keeping the highly trained professionals in the ranks.  This retention has posed some end strength dilemmas for us, but this is a challenge that also allows us opportunities.  The poor retention we experienced in recent years has been reversed, a testimony to both your support and the patriotism of young Americans who join and continue to serve.  But we have to keep our focus.  As we've experienced in the past, positive retention trends are dependent on many rapidly changing dynamics and we can't afford to take our eyes off the ball.  Thus, in the coming years we will continue to watch our retention of key warfighting career fields. The battle of is not won.  But we have made much progress.

DEVELOPING AIRMEN -- RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

At the heart of our combat capability are the professional Airmen who voluntarily serve the Air Force and our nation.  Airmen create air and space power.  Our Airmen turn ideas, tools, tactics, techniques, and procedures into global mobility, power projection, and battlespace effects.  It is with this understanding that the Air Force embraced a new Personnel Vision and Strategic Planning Construct to help transform management of "Airmen" across the Total Force (active duty, Air National Guard, and reserve; officer, enlisted, and civilian).

We are refocusing our personnel processes and delivery systems on achieving the capabilities and creating the effects which produce for our Air Force the Right People, possessing of the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to perform their missions at the Right Place and Right Time.  This New Vision succinctly states the role of our manpower, personnel, and training professionals:  defining mission requirements; continually refreshing the pool to maintain an effective balance of youth and vigor, age and experience; deliberately developing the skills, knowledge and experience required by our combatant and support missions; sustaining the Force by meeting the needs of our Airmen and their families; and providing synchronized and integrated program management and service delivery systems.

Our strategic goals focus on the effects of the personnel mission and the specific capabilities our system offers to our Airmen and their leaders.  Two of these goals, Define and Renew, focus on our force size and end strength will serve as our framework for the written testimony that follows, just as they are part of the underlying framework for our personnel vision.  In these areas we will discuss key issues facing the Air Force today, and what we are doing in each of those cases to look forward and ensure we are building the right force for tomorrow.

Define:  Implement a capabilities-based requirements system that meets surge requirements and optimizes force mix (Active duty, Air Reserve Component, civilian, and contractors) to produce a flexible and responsive force

Renew:  Maintain a diverse, agile workforce that leverages synergy between active duty, air reserve and civilian components, and private industry to meet requirements and sustain capabilities

DEFINE: 

As we define the Air Force of the future we must determine our end strength needs, we must shape the force to meet those needs, and we must relieve the current stress on our most heavily stressed career fields.  These are complex and inter-related issues. The process by which we approach this challenge involves how we manage our Total Force of Air Force active duty members, Air National Guard, Air Reserve, and Air Force civilians.  It also encompasses the steps we are taking to relieve pressure on our Guard and Reserve forces.

-- End Strength:

During the last several years, following the recruiting and retentions shortfalls of the late 90's, the Air Force has brought thousands of sharp, motivated people into our ranks--essentially, all of those who wanted to serve in the Air Force were welcomed.  To meet end strength, we rolled up our sleeves and increased recruiting.  Incredible patriotism prompted by the attacks on 11 September 2001 surged our growth and follow-on imposition of Stop Loss put us well above our authorized end strength.  We are proud of the efforts of our outstanding Air Force professionals in the war on terrorism and are delighted that so many people want to be a part of our winning team.  These very positive facts, together with an attractive compensation package and an uncertain economy, have reduced what would have been normal attrition.  In other words, not as many people left the Air Force in the last several years as we had anticipated.

As a result, for the last several years we have exceeded our authorized active end strength of 359,000.  Air Force active duty military end strength (i.e. billets) is set at 359,300 for FY 04, 359,700 for FY 05.  The actual number of personnel assigned to the Air Force at the end of FY03 was 375,000 -- approximately 16,000 personnel above our currently authorized target.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chart 1: Actual End Strength Positions

This over end strength position is a temporary situation fueled by the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), and we are working to meet our authorized strength.  As we work to reduce the size of our active force by 16,000 people over the next several years, we will also work to reshape the force to correct existing skill imbalances and account for a new range of missions in the GWOT.  This work is a deliberate, incremental approach, which ensures we not only have the proper number of people, but that we also have them in the proper skills, and that we ensure mission capability throughout the process, and posture the force to meet future requirements.   Our trend of requested endstrength reflects a more incremental approach to sizing out forces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 Chart 2: End Strength Requested in Budget

Because we have more people in the Air Force than the number of our currently authorized billets, it has led some to ask if we need to increase the size of the force to accomplish the mission, especially with increased/extended mobilization. The answer is that first we need to ensure that we are using the people we have in the most efficient and effective way.  Manpower, like dollars, is sized to provide capabilities within our allocated end strength.  We have a life cycle system that reviews our manpower requirements versus currently authorized end strength and makes appropriate allocation decisions to achieve optimum force utilization, and minimize stress.  Manpower requirements are compared to our personnel inventory and adjustments to accessions, training and manning are made to meet those requirements.   As these adjustments are made, the Air Force and DoD are constantly reviewing end strength needs.  At present, we are working deliberately to measure stress and make informed reallocation decisions within the existing force, and have not exhausted all potential internal sources to address stress on the force.  People costs account for a significant portion of the Department's budget-the Air Force must ensure optimum allocation of existing force assets before requesting an expensive increase to military end strength.

In our aggregate review, we have found that current force structure seems adequate in total numbers but the skills mix must be adjusted.  As the Air Force adapts to a capabilities construct, we are adjusting our manpower requirements processes.

We are starting with requirements to meet the warfighting commander's needs across the spectrum of conflict.  Military requirements to meet these needs form the bedrock of our force.   Additive to those military needs are our requirements for in-garrison missions, such as our nuclear forces, space missions, training infrastructure, etc.  We continue to review our requirements to ensure we use military resources for military tasks and look to civilians and contractors to meet the balance of our human resource needs.  As force structure changes in response to emerging threats, we will adjust manpower to support that new structure. 

The Guard and Reserve forces that support our Total Force team are designed to meet the Nation's call in times of crisis, such as the current Global War on Terrorism

(GWOT).  Activation of the Guard and Reserve in times of crisis is not, in and of itself, a reason to seek an increase to end strength.  As part of our review, we are taking a hard look at missions currently assigned to Active, Guard, and Reserve in light of the foreseeable future requirements for conflicts, and seeking to achieve the correct balance among these total force components.  Through effective balancing of total force missions and maximum use of volunteerism in Guard and Reserve units, we can maximize the use of all of our military personnel assets and minimize the length of time Guard and Reservists are activated.

Throughout this process, we must adjust our manpower and personnel policies and systems to meet current needs and anticipate future requirements.  Because we are dealing with human beings and processes that are measured in years (ex. growing a trained mid-grade NCO) we need to be prudent in the speed and magnitude of the changes we make, and we must avoid permanent fixes to temporary challenges.  Simply put, we cannot saw the controls of our systems back and forth, but instead must ease them into new positions.   Significant changes in the requirements in a particular specialty may drive changes in areas such as: Recruiting policies to attract the right people; Training systems to include (potentially) MILCON for new facilities; Forced retraining or reenlistment bonus policies to achieve and maintain 100% manning; and permanent changes of station to move people to where these new requirements are placed.  Since these changes directly impact our people, who serve voluntarily, we need to be prudent in the speed and magnitude of the change, in order to avoid unintended adverse consequences, including unanticipated drops in recruiting and retention.  Our challenge is to make the right personnel policy decisions and implement them so that our human resource systems react quickly enough to meet emerging requirements, while not causing undue hardships on our people.   

-- Shaping the Force: 

The Air Force is planning to implement several measures to shape the force as we move back to our authorized end strength -- knowing as we do so that we must also reduce the stress on many of our "over stressed" career fields.  This will be a multi-step process, but our guiding principles will be simple.  We want to properly size the Air

Force to meet the needs of our Air Expeditionary Force construct, our in-garrison requirements and our training requirements.  We want to ensure that we draw down smartly, by specialty (and by specific year groups within those specialties) where we have more people than we need.  At the same time, we want to correct our skill imbalances, increasing the number of people in our shortage specialties.  However, perhaps most importantly, as we shape the force, we want to be sure that we avoid involuntary "draconian" measures that break faith with our people.  With these guiding principles clearly in view, we are taking a number of deliberate and very specific steps to shape the force. 

In broad terms, we are addressing force shaping in two ways:  first, by reducing personnel overages in most skills; and second, by shaping the remaining force to meet mission requirements.  To reduce personnel, we will employ a number of voluntary tools to restructure manning levels in Air Force career specialties, while adjusting our active force size to our authorized end strength requirements.  As we progress, we will evaluate whether we need to modify these steps, or implement additional force shaping measures.

We are taking a hard look at where our people are.  In some cases, we have Airmen serving in jobs outside the Air Force who do not deploy as part of an Air Expeditionary Force (AEF).   Some of these, such as joint positions and some defense agency positions, require uniformed people, and we benefit by having an Airman's perspective in those jobs.   Others, however, may not require an airman or a military person at all.  These are military positions that we are working to reclaim into our ranks.   By taking the steps to return these Airmen "to the fold", we will ensure we have more military positions available to support our critical warfighting skills, as well as increasing the number of personnel available to support our AEF rotations overseas, which in turn will reduce stress on the rest of the force.

We are implementing a program that will move us toward our goal of getting our authorized strength and our personnel skill mix right.  This program includes initiatives such as restricting reenlistment in overage career fields, voluntary transfers from Active Duty to the Guard and Reserves, shortening service commitments, limiting officer continuation for those deferred for promotion, commissioning ROTC cadets direct to the Guard and Reserves, limiting reclassification of those eliminated from technical school, rolling back separation dates, and officer and enlisted retraining.       

If at all possible, our goal is to give every qualified Airman who wants to stay in the Air Force the opportunity to do so.  In addition, we will use every tool to shape the force we have available to avoid the extreme measures used in the early 1990s, including involuntary separations and arbitrarily reduced accessions, which undermined the morale and confidence of the force, and created long term force management challenges.

-- Stressed Career Fields:

The events of 9/11 and the subsequent increase in deployments to support a variety of operations around the globe have resulted in a significant increase in operations tempo and sharply accelerated the existing stress on some elements of the force.  Complicating this problem is the fact that the additional stress is unequally distributed across the various Air Force skill sets.  Nevertheless, the Air Force is working to level the stress across the force to an acceptable rate, albeit higher than pre- 9/11 stress levels.

The Department of Defense initiated 20,000 military to civilian replacements beginning in FY 04.  The Air Force share was 4,300 of these.   The Air Force had also been working on realigning our military authorizations into stressed career fields that better address post 9/11 workloads.  We addressed reducing and balancing stress with numerous manpower and personnel initiatives.  Beginning in FY03, we redirected 1,110 initial accession/training students to our most stressed specialties.  In FY04, we expanded our efforts with actions including:  redirecting an additional 1,060 initial accession/training students to stressed specialties; identifying 1,400 authorizations to redirect to Security Forces; adding over 900 civilian authorizations to stressed areas to free up military members for warfighting duties; and moving another 900 billets from less stressed to most stressed AFSCs.  For FY05 we are projecting the realignment of an additional 900 billets from less stressed to most stressed AFSCs -- along with adding 1,600 military billets to these specialties through a combination of mil-civ replacements and other programmatic actions.   We are also finalizing requirements for additional training and accession adjustments.  Finally, we have already begun to address FY06 by dedicating another 400 military positions for stress in our initial calculations.

Significant technology solution purchases made during FY 03 are also offsetting manpower requirements.  A Security Forces $352M technology purchase reduced unfunded Security Forces manpower requirements by 3,000 (with 1,600 of these in the active duty) beginning in FY 04.   Additional significant efforts are underway to further relieve and balance stress.   We continue to work with Defense Agencies to reduce our total number of military positions in these functions, replacing them with civilians where appropriate. Collectively, these efforts are enabling the Air Force to meet the Secretary of Defense's vision of moving forces "from the bureaucracy to the battlefield."

-- Total Force Management - Active, Guard, Reserve and Civilian:

Today we are also shaping what our Total Force will look like in the future.  As we carefully review what each component brings to the fight, we work to ensure the best capabilities are retained and nurtured.   Just as in combat overseas, we are continuing to pursue seamless ARC and active duty integration at home, leveraging the capabilities and characteristics of each component, while allowing each to retain their cultural identity.  We continue to explore a variety of organizational initiatives to further integrate our Active, Guard, and Reserve forces.  These efforts are intended to expand mission flexibility, create efficiencies in our Total Force, and prepare for the future.  Today's Future Total Force team includes a number of blended or associate units that are programmed or already hard at work.  The creation of the "blended" unit, the 116th Air Control Wing at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, elevated integration to the next level. With an initial deployment of over 730 personnel, and significant operational achievements in OIF, we are now examining opportunities to integrate Active, Guard, and Reserve units elsewhere in order to produce even more measurable benefits, savings, and efficiencies.  The reasons for this type of integration are compelling.  We can maximize our warfighting capabilities by integrating Active, Guard, and Reserve forces to optimize the contributions of each component.  Reservists and Guardsmen bring with them capabilities they have acquired in civilian jobs, leveraging the experience of ARC personnel.  As an added benefit, this integration relieves PERSTEMPO on the active duty force.  Because ARC members do not move as often, they also provide much needed corporate knowledge, stability, and continuity.  Finally, integration enhances the retention of Airmen who decide to leave active service. Because the Guard and Reserve are involved in many Air Force missions, we recapture the investment we've made by retaining separating active duty members as members of the ARC--a clear "capability" enhancement for the Air Force and the country.

-- Relieving Pressure on the Guard and Reserve:

Although we continue to benefit from outstanding volunteerism from our Guard and Reserve forces, we are reviewing our Guard and Reserve manpower to minimize involuntary mobilization of ARC forces for day-to-day, steady state operations while ensuring they are prepared to respond in times of crisis.  Since 9/11, we've mobilized more than 64,800 Air Force Guard and Reserve personnel in over 100 units, and many more individual mobilization augmentees.  Today, 20 percent of our Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) packages are comprised of citizen Airmen.  In addition, members of the Guard or Reserve conduct 89 percent of Operation NOBLE EAGLE missions. We recognize these demands have placed significant stress on our ARC forces, and we are taking steps to relieve the pressure on the Guard and Reserve.

In FY05, we plan to redistribute forces in a number of mission areas among the Reserve and Active components to balance the burden on the Reserves.  These missions include our Air and Space Operations Centers, remotely piloted aircraft systems, Combat Search and Rescue, Security Forces, and a number of high demand global mobility systems.  We are working to increase Guard and Reserve volunteerism by addressing equity of benefits and tour-length predictability, while addressing civilian employer issues.  

We are in the second year of our agreement to employ Army National Guard soldiers for Force Protection at Air Force installations, temporarily mitigating our 8,000 personnel shortfall in Security Forces.  As we do this, we are executing an aggressive plan to rapidly burn down our need for Army augmentation and working to redesign manpower requirements. Our reduction plan maximizes the use of Army volunteers in the second year, and allows for demobilization of about one third of the soldiers employed in the first year.  Simultaneously, through agreement with the Army and CENTCOM, we are providing Air Force personnel to meet some critical Army requirements in the on-going OIF operations.

At the center of our efforts to relieve pressure on the Guard and Reserve are our efforts to use innovative personnel management initiatives to enhance flexibility and reduce involuntary mobilization.  A number of these initiatives focus on promoting volunteerism among Guard and Reserve members.  For example, relative to the aforementioned efforts to mitigate the Security Forces shortfall is the ARC Security Forces augmentation program.  In December 2003 the Air Force initiated a prototype program to use ARC volunteers (of all specialties) to assist in installation force protection.  The initiative allows ARC members to serve flexible tours as force protection augmentees, assisting in such duties as vehicle inspection and entry control.  This centrally funded program allows commanders to access a ready pool of willing volunteers and enables reservists to augment their military skills.

We are also exploring a concept called Sponsored Reserve.  This initiative involves a pre-contracted, voluntary agreement among the military, the ARC member, and industry to fill high-demand, critical skills that are honed in the civilian sector and that the Air Force requires for contingency situations. 

An essential element in our efforts to promote volunteerism is to provide predictability via the AEF rotation schedule.  Not only are ARC members integrated into a predictable Total Force AEF schedule, but units are also afforded flexibility through internal Guard and Reserve rotations for AEF support in the case of high-demand/low density specialties.  For example, in executing the COMMANDO SOLO Special Operations mission, the Pennsylvania Air National Guard's 193d Special Operations Wing uses predictable 45-day rotations.  In this way, even with a high operational tempo, members are afforded a high degree of predictability, which eases pressure on them, their families, and their employers. 

There is no doubt that in the Global War on Terror, the United States Air Force has relied on the critical mission skills that our Guard and Reserve warriors bring to the fight. Simply put, we could not have accomplished the mission without them, and our seamless integration of Active and ARC forces continues to facilitate their participation.  But we also recognize that, in the long-term, we must make every effort to relieve the pressure on our ARC forces. Just as we must take steps to ensure the long-term health of our active duty forces, so too must we ensure the long-term health, combat capability, and career viability of our citizen soldiers in the Air Guard and Reserve.  We are committed to doing so.

RENEW

Our focus on renewing our force will examine the issues of recruiting, retention, and diversity, and their overall effect on the health of our force.   These efforts directly affect our long-term ability to not only meet our authorized end strength, but to also ensure our ability to sustain the force with the proper skill mix (capabilities) into the future.  A continued emphasis on these programs and their funding is essential to the long-term health of the Air Force.  This is another area, which demands small, and incremental changes if any must be made, and we are carefully managing the controls of the systems.

-- Recruiting:

To renew our force, we target our recruitment to ensure a diverse force with the talent and drive to be the best Airmen in the world's greatest Air Force.  We will recruit those with the skills most critical for our continued success.  In FY03, our goal was 6607 officers and 37,000 enlisted; accessing 6,548 officers and 37,144 enlisted.  For FY04, we plan to access 5,795 officers and as many as 37,000 enlisted.  In FY05 we plan to access 35,600 enlisted and 5,724 officers.  In FY06 our goal is 34,600 enlisted and 5,625 officers. 

These measured decrements in our recruiting goals are part of our deliberate effort to bring down the overall size of the force to meet authorized end strength without jeopardizing the long-term health of the force by drastically reducing the number of our new accessions.  As we learned after the post-Cold War draw down when we slashed the number of accessions and associated training (we cut pilot training, for example, from 1,500 per year to 500 per year) we built long term structural personnel deficits into our inventory of trained personnel, with the result that shortages of particular year groups will be with us for up to 20 years.  This time, in our efforts to solve a short-term problem, we are determined not to create a long-term problem of even greater significance.  This is a cornerstone of our approach to renewing the force in the environment of the early 21^st century. 

We also closely monitor recruitment for the Air Reserve Component (ARC). Historically, the ARC -- comprised of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve -- access close to 25 percent of eligible, separating active duty Air Force members with no break in service between their active duty and ARC service.   This "capability continuity" is a key ingredient in mission effectiveness of ARC units, and an important element of our Active /ARC integration and utilization strategy. 

Although we are currently meeting our recruiting goals and maintaining high standards for accessions, we need to keep our focus.  Your continued support of our recruiting and marketing programs goes a long way to keeping the Air Force competitive in an uncertain job market.  We are mindful of our experience of a decade ago.  In a period when recruiting and retention looked positive, we allowed our recruiting investments to lag behind the growing challenges of the market place and found ourselves chasing a "sine wave."  In the past several years, we reversed course and made the investments needed to tune our recruiting engine.  We need to sustain that engine now with proper care and maintenance.  Additionally, these investments contribute to improved esprit de corps within our force, and further our efforts to retain the right people and shape our force for the future.

-- Retention: 

The Air Force is a retention-based, all volunteer force.  Because the skill sets of our Airmen are not easily replaced, we expend considerable effort to retain our people, especially those in high technology fields and those in whom we have invested significant education and training.  In 2003, we reaped the benefits of an aggressive retention program, aided by a renewed focus and investment on education and individual development, enlisted and retention bonuses, targeted military pay raises, quality of life improvements, and a reinforced advertising campaign.  While we are still grappling with skewed retention numbers affected by STOP LOSS in 2002, we are nevertheless seeing very positive signs overall.  Our officer retention rates for FY03 and so far in FY04 are above previous years.  For the enlisted force, our retention is healthy, but we must continue to actively manage our force.  Our current first term aggregate retention rate is 67%, which is well above our goal of 55%.  For second term, we are on the mark with 75% and we are exceeding our 95% goal with 98% of our career Airmen being retained.

Part of our ability to succeed in our recruiting and retention efforts stems directly from our ability to offer market-based bonuses and incentives to groups where we have traditionally needed the extra help.  Our retention efforts reflect what has already been stated about recruiting:  Our efforts right now are paying dividends for the Air Force and we must sustain this trend for the future.  We fully recognize our ability to offer bonuses is a valuable and scarce resource, which is why we've ensured active senior leadership management in these programs, including semi-annual reviews of which career specialties, and which year groups within those specialties, are eligible for bonuses. 

CONCLUSION

The Air Force team is moving into the 21^st century assured of only three things: That the challenges will be great, that the resources given to us by the American people -- to include their sons and daughters -- are resources that require our best possible stewardship, and -- most importantly -- that superior leadership will be indispensable. We are committed to providing the nation with the best-trained, best led, personnel on the planet.  It's that simple ... and that important.